20 comments:

I’m gonna bring the Print-On-Demand jabber over to here to the current date (see 01-05 comments if interested).

I’m baffled as to why an industry would insist on RGB files to print CMYK material. I assume it is just to standardize everything, since most people who submit stuff will be dealing with RGB photos. From a Capitalist Pig business perspective I guess that makes sense.

But from a publishing perspective it’s crazy. There’s no way around it that I know of – going back and forth between CMYK and RGB changes colors. I struggled with a solution to this for a work project. So did Sculptor Rick. We could not escape the inevitable – it will change! It can be very subtle, and 99% of the time it not noticeable, but it always adds cyan to yellow, and that sux. I’m no perfectionist prima donna artiste, but the whole thing just confounds me.

It has already happened. Ice storms and a dirty rotten cold have conspired to screw up my grandiose plans for 2009.

Crazy Boss will go on! It is Number TWO priority! Paying freelance work is Number One, that’s a given.

SO – something’s gotta give on EveryThing, and on the mm.net update, and on another project I have not even mentioned here publicly. I do have a new idea for EveryThing that I very much want to get off the ground, but I can’t see it happening weekly. So I’ll talk to Panel-to-Panel and we’ll figure something out, I guess.

I recently joined this online community thing for my high school graduating class. Some of those people I do not know from Adam’s housecat. I don’t recognize the name, the face, nothing. I have a touch of that facial recognition problem anyway. Never been diagnosed by a qualified medical provider, but I know I do.

But the firewood I burn in the wood stove – I actually recognize some of the pieces of firewood! I remember stacking it! “Oh hey” I think to myself, “there’s that one with that weird ‘ingrown’ bark on the edge!” Or “Hey, there’s those 5 woodpecker holes again! I remember you!”

What TV show was it where that old lady carried the log around? Twin Peaks? That’ll be me one day.

This story is unfolding backwards thing is confusing. But I get it now. Why not just post the whole friggin page when you've finished it?

The first page there, though--is it meant to be printed in color? I like your painty tone effects, and I know it's a more time consuming way to work, but it would be cool if you did your black and white tones in guache or something.

It sounds like a solution to your subtle color change issue with RGB vs. CMYK may be found in Channels on photoshop. In channels you can adjust the amount of C, M, Y, and K in each color.

Go to channels, find yellow, crank the cyan all the way to zero, and whoola, problem solved.

I've never noticed a huge difference, but that's just me. I often work in RGB. The only freelance I tend to get is for Free Weeklies and newsprint is murder on color so I have to crank up the saturation on everything anyway, and it totally looks psychedelic on my screen either way.

I have to say, Ka-blam isn't the only digital printer who asks for RGB. It might be something to do with how these machines are made, I have no idea.

Haven’t you ever seen a movie or TV show unfold backwards? That Seinfeld episode? It was brilliant. There’s a lot you can do with it. I don’t think it’s confusing at all once you catch on. Give it time.

This way, anyone who comes in at any time, can read the thing from whatever point they enter, FORWARD...

Have faith in me. It’s going to rock your world.

As for RGB / CMYK. YES, you can fix it in channels in CMYK. But when you go back to RGB to send them the rgb files they demand, it is going to RE-appear when it is converted to CMYK for printing. They have to be using some variation of cmyk ink or toner.

Trust me. You can’t get around it. If you can, please tell me how. Like I said – we tried and tried!

ALSO – to properly print COMICS, the black line should be 100% black only, and overprint all other colors. When you convert to RGB, you’ve destroyed all that, and switching it back to cmyk won’t make it return.

Yes, the whale page is intended to be color, but limited color to draw attention to the Pepto-Bismol.

The bottom two thirds of the previous page, which is what you are seeing now, are black and white only.

There are certain panels in the story that require color, like a recurring rainbow. And there is a section of the story that is full-color, for a reason I won’t go into now. But black and white seems to suit the “Crazy Boss Universe” well, and it’s frankly a lot faster to do, which I frankly have to consider.

It can all be adjusted later depending on the demands of however it gets printed. But for now, on the web, I’ll play with color. And it seems like a picture book is a picture book to P.O.D. Printers, regardless of color or black and white. So I’ll just deliver it all in color if that’s the way it gets printed. But a lot of the pages will have very limited actual color on them.

Replace Color my friend! Replace color! Select the color that looks icky and change the hue to the approximate hue you prefer. Maybe. I don't know, it's a thought. There'll probably still be some blue in there (I see what you mean, thus neutralizing the yellow somewhat, losing brightness) . I suppose you could print it out on your printer before you send it off to see if you're close, then adjust as needed. But yeah, it sounds like a no win. I never realized the evils of RGB. Yikes! I've been working in RGB, and have been wondering why my pink wasn't as vibrant as I wanted it. Drat!

About the 100% black issue--I do threshold on my line, then make a clipping path and paint them 100% black so my grays are separate from my lines. I'm at 600 dpi, but there's still some anti-aliasing on the lines. I've been told that this is bad. Now since I'm at the moment working the actual size of the art (more than twice the print size) I just figured I could reduce it and go up to 1200 later and take care of it. So how do I get rid of the anti-aliasing? And do I need to?

Also for spot color--I'm told again that you should get rid of the anti-aliasing for spots. Now I did seps on my blue kid at 600 dpi with anti-aliasing and it came out pretty good. So what are the drawbacks here?